Innocence after Experience: Herrick's "Oberon's Palace" as Counter-Epithalamion

Abstract

Abstract:"Oberon's Palace," one of Robert Herrick's fairy poems, offers unusual variations on topoi of virginity and matrimony. This article argues that the Herrick's poem is a "counter-epithalamion," a genre combining the high sacred concerns of traditional epithalamia with lower nuptial forms, particularly fescennine verses. Herrick uses this hybrid genre to complex ends, at once satirizing the debauched sexuality of the Fairy King and his court and celebrating the cultural power of poetic artifice.